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It's a wonder 38-year-old Kenneth Dewayne Williams lived long enough to be executed by the state of Arkansas Thursday evening.

Williams was born in 1979, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment.

He was put to death Thursday evening, the fourth convicted killer executed in Arkansas in the past week.

"The long path of justice ended tonight and Arkansans can reflect on the last two weeks with confidence that our system of laws in this state has worked," Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.

"Carrying out the penalty of the jury in the Kenneth Williams case was necessary. There has never been a question of guilt."

The father routinely whipped his boys and beat Williams with a belt and threw him against the wall.

The Williams' homes "were roach and rat infested." Utilities were frequently turned off. Often there was little to eat.

"The house was very, very dirty, always," a neighbor said in court documents.

"I don't think there was any running water. The smell of the house and the way Kenneth smelled I can still remember. There was feces in the house in buckets and in all kinds of places and I think they just peed wherever."

'Attention-getting antics'

Williams often was left unsupervised. He started smoking marijuana at age 6, drinking beer at age 9.

He failed first grade and third grade.

He had "difficulties with reading, spelling, math, receptive language, ability to remember material presented visually and verbally, and poor listening skills," his second grade teacher wrote.

A failed escape, and more dead

Williams took Boren's wallet, guns and truck, then led police on a high-speed chase into Missouri where he crashed into another vehicle, killing Michael Greenwood, a 24-year-old deliveryman.

A jury convicted Williams of killing Boren and sentenced him to death on Aug. 30, 2000.

He was executed Thursday evening, nearly 17 years later.

A reporter who witnessed the execution said Williams' body jerked violently 15 times in quick succession, then slowly five more times, before he died.

“I personally know part of the Boren family, and, of course, naturally we empathize with them,” Charles R. Knight, mayor of Grady, Ark., near the prison, told The New York Times.

“But we empathize for all of the families involved, and being Christian, we also empathize with the inmates as well. From my standpoint, I look at it as, this is the law, this is what the law has allotted and this is what we do.”